34 executive summary theibcdaily Content moves to cloud science The appliance of
Michelle Munson was a software engineer in research and start-up companies including the IBM Almaden Research centre before founding Aspera in 2004. She has dual
B.Sc. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Physics from Kansas State University and, later, a Fulbright Scholar in Computer Science at Cambridge University. She has received national achievement awards from Glamour Magazine and USA Today.
Michelle Munson
President, CEO and Co-Founder, Aspera Region: US
Interview by Ann-Marie Corvin
“The impact of digital media technology on society will inspire young people”
How did you become involved in cloud computing? It started while I was working for two customers, Amazon and Netflix. Both were using S3 storage and home-grown processes to copy data from the receiving location but those methods weren’t scaling and they couldn’t store large objects. They needed a software layer that would allow transfer of large data files between sites over distances. So we built a native bridge. This has now developed into a fully- fledged platform – Aspera on Demand – the fastest growing area of our business.
Some content producers say that it’s cheap to store material in the cloud – provided that you never need to access it again… There are a few common misconceptions over the notion
of idle storage. Cloud storage APIs and the interfacing software to support it is becoming more standardised as platforms mature. So it has become straightforward [to access material] if you are comfortable using common APIs.
Is security of cloud-held data a justified concern? Encryption of data at rest, in storage and during transfer is already built into Aspera On Demand but concerns about managing security are still a big barrier to usage. We are addressing access control and authorisation. The challenge is that, in the past, different environments have all had their own access schemes. So these systems need to be built into software to make this process easier.
You were once named ‘Top Woman in Cloud’ – how do you think the broadcast industry can get more women involved in engineering?
The lack of women in engineering is not a problem unique to the broadcast industry but I think that first and foremost, examples showcasing technology and the impact it has on society will encourage not only women but all young people in the process of making career choices. Last summer’s Olympics and every major championship from the NBA to the NFL have been powered by digital media technology, most of which has been invented in the last 15 years. The greatest thing media can do is to shine a light on these ramifications of computer technology.
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